‘They’re Trying to Cancel Our Entire Country’: When Putin Compares Russia to JK Rowling

During a televised address this Friday, the Russian president dared to make a surprising comparison. He assured that Russia was the victim of the same “cancellation culture” (discriminatory words or acts by a public figure, the editor’s note followed by a call for boycott) as the author of Harry Potter.

Vladimir Putin was speaking at a Russian cultural arena event, and used comparisons to explain the boycott of Russian art. In a lengthy televised speech given to winners of various cultural awards, the Russian president claimed that Russian musicians and writers were discriminated against by the West.

“They’re Trying to Cancel Our Entire Country, Our People”, did he announce. they rebelled “Progressive discrimination against anything connected with Russia (…) in many Western states”, Going to compare his charges to the Nazi Book Burning of the Third Reich regime. “There is also a campaign going on against Russian musicians, including Tchaikovsky, Shostakovich and Rachmaninoff”, he said.

Putin then referred to the case of the producer of the famous magician. “JK Rowling was canceled because she, the author of books that have sold millions of copies worldwide, did not appeal to fans of so-called gender freedom,” He insisted.

In 2020, JK Rowling was heavily criticized for her transphobic comments. Subsequently, the actors and fans of the saga had distanced themselves from the author. He was not invited to the reunion special for the 20th anniversary of the first film.

In a response this Friday, the author responded that it was probably not appropriate to criticize the West’s canceled culture when a “Carnage Citizen”, ,Criticisms of Western culture are arguably not best when they are carried out by those who currently massacre civilians whose crime it is to protest, or when they imprison or poison those who criticize them.She wrote on Twitter sharing an article on Alexei Navalny.